“Translating Rilke” at the Writer’s Roundtable

The Writer’s Roundtable, monthly writer’s group, will meet July 21 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Orcas Island Public Library. The topic for this month will be “Translating Rilke” by John Friedmann.

Rainer Maria Rilke, a Bohemian-Austrian poet writing in German and French, was born in Prague 136 years ago. He is widely admired for his lyrical poetry as well as for two major sequences: The Duino Elegies (1912-22) and the Sonnets to Orpheus (1922-24). Although widely translated into English and many other languages, much of his poetry remains in effect untranslatable, and the extant versions differ sometimes widely from each other. In this comparative reading, we will try to explore the reasons for these differences as a way of plumbing Rilke’s meaning, as well as present a linguistic and cultural argument, illustrated with appropriate examples, of why even the “essential” Rilke often comes to us in badly distorted translations.

John Friedmann divides his time between Orcas Island and Vancouver, B.C. where he is honorary professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Some of his poems have been published in various small collections, but mostly he has written for his own delight. He also loves to translate poetry, especially the larger works of Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Paul Celan.

Mostly John writes academic books, of which he has published more than a dozen. He is married to Leonie Sandercock.

The Panther

(Jardin des Plantes, Paris, 1906)

His gaze has from the constant passing of the bars
become so tired that it holds nothing more.
It is as if there were a thousand cages,
and to the world a thousand cages closed the door.

A strong-willed supple movement
within the smallest of all circles turns,
is like a dance of energy around a centre
where numbed a mighty power stands.

From time to time the curtain of his eye
glides open silently, and then an image
passes in that travels through the limbs’
strained stillness and ceases in the heart to be.

R. M. Rilke

Translated by John Friedmann